Porgie Sproggins.
Cave man. Brute.
Hulking, enormous, shaggy-haired, prognathous jawed, a veritable
Cro-magnard type. Bluely unshaven and scowling.
Warble saw him first across the room at a picture exhibition in Manley
Knight's gallery.
His nose startled her. It was like an alligator pear--and his complexion
was like those cactus fruits that likewise infest fancy grocers' shops.
A visitor from the South Sea Islands? No, he wasn't that sort. He was a
Fossil. Vikings were in his face, and Beef Eaters and Tarzan.
Warble flew at him.
“Do you like me?” she whispered.
“No,” he growled, and she kissed his hand which was like a hand by
Rodin.
Thus does the law of compensation get in its fine work. Warble
remembered the little boy at the public school, and she wished she could
give Sproggins a red balloon.
“What is he?” she asked of Trymie.
“A miniature painter,” Icanspoon replied, “and a wonder! He does
portraits that fairly make the eyes pop out of your head! He's got the
world agog.”
Warble drifted back to the attraction.
“_Do_ like me,” she said, and shot him a glance that was a bolt from the
blue.
Warble was of the appealing sex, and hardly a man was yet alive who
could resist her.
Sproggins turned on her fiercely. He grasped her by the shoulders,
pressing them back as if he would tear her apart.
“Let me see your soul!” he demanded, and his great face came near to
peer down through her eyes.
“Ugh, merely blocked in,” and he flung her from him.
“It isn't block tin!” she retorted, angrily, “it's pure gold--as you
will find out!”
He gave her another glance and two more grunts and turned away to devote
himself to Daisy Snow.
Bing! That was the way things came to Warble.
Fate, Kismet, Predestination--whatever it was, it came zip! boom!
hell-for-leather!
“It's not only his strength but his crudeness--like petroleum or
Egyptian art.
“He can control--
“Amazingly impertinent!
“He wasn't--
“But I wish he had been--
“He will be!”
* * * * *
She went to see him--in his studio.
A bijou studio, fitted for a painter of miniatures. French gilt
gimcracks. Garlands of fresh pink roses, tied with blue ribbons.
“Get out,” he said, staring at her a second and then returning to his
niggling at a miniature.
Warble made a face at him.
“Do that again,” he commanded, reaching for a clean slice of ivory.
A few tiny brushmarks.
A wonder picture of Warble--made face, and all.
“Pleathe--Pleathe--” she held out her hand, and he dropped the miniature
into it.
“Why don't you hit it off better with your husband?” he demanded.
“Don't ask me things when you know everything yourself.”
“I do. I paint a miniature of a face, and I get a soul laid bare.”
“Your name? Your silly first name--”
“It's a nickname.”
“For what?”
“Areopagitica.”
“Sweet--sweet--” cooed Warble, dimpling.
“Oh, you popinjay! I wish you and I were ragpickers--”
“What!”
“It's my ambition. I don't want to be a miniature painter all my
life. But to be a ragpicker--ah, there's something to strive for! A
rattlebanging cart, with jangling bells on a string across the back, a
galled jade of a horse, broken traces, mismated lines--whoa!--giddap,
there! oh--Warble, come with me!”
He swooped her up in one gigantic arm, but she slipped through and
running around, faced him impishly.
“Would you really like me to go ridy-by in your wagon, and curl up in
the rags and watch the stars shoot around overhead?”
“No, better stay here--” he patted her shoulder gently, leaving a deep
purple bruise.
“Why?”
“Better not stay here--better go home.”
“Why?”
“Goodby.”
He took her up--it seemed to her between his thumb and forefinger--and
set her outside his door, promptly closing and locking it.
* * * * *
She heard him return to his work. She trotted home. Her husband, as she
paused to look in at his door, greeted her:
“Had a good time?”
She could not answer.
He yawned, delicately. He was seated at his mirror, arranging his
wringing wet permanent in serried rows by means of tiny combs.
“Gooooo--oooo--oo--d night,” he said.
That was all. Yet she was kinda mad.
* * * * *
A footle, twaddly love affair! No art. A silly little dumpling
smattering with a brute beast.
“No, he is not! He has noble impulses--ragpicking--inspired! His eyes
were misty when he spoke of it--
“A way out of Butterfly Thenter!
“A ragpicker's cart--
“A way out--”
Petticoat held her up.
“You seem a bit gone on that tin-type fellow, Sproggins.”
“Yop. Maybe I'd better go to Atlantic Thity for a while.”
“Oh, no, you stay here. A lady's place is in the home.”
* * * * *
So she was fairly thrown at Porgie.
Another downpour of fate. And Warble, caught without an umbrella or
rubbers.
The night came unheralded.
Petticoat had gone to Iva Payne's on an urgent summons--over-ripe
sardines--and Warble had wandered out into the moonlight.
Petticoat, out of his new wealth, had, like Kubla Khan in Xanadu, a
stately pleasure dome decreed, and in this new architectural triumph,
where water lilies and swans floated on the surface of a deep black
pool, Warble restlessly tossed in a welter of golden cushions, changing
her position every ten seconds.
A giant lumbered in.
“Porgie!”
“Saw your husband speeding away--couldn't stand it, dropped in. Take me
upstairs--I want to see your shoe cabinet.”
“Oh, don't spoil everything. Be my gentleman friend. Tell me about your
dreams and ideals--your rags--”
“Ah--rags--you do love me!”
“I don't know--but I love rags--sweet--so sweet--”
“You're a misfit here--as who isn't. All misfits,
frauds--fakes--liars--”
“All?” Warble looked interested.
“Yes, you little simpleton. I know!” He growled angrily. “Shall I tell
you--tell you the truth about the Butterflies?”
“Pleathe--pleathe--”
“I will! You ought to know--you gullible little fool. Well, to start
with, Avery Goodman--in his true nature, he's a worldly, carnal man. His
religion is a cloak, a raincoat, a mere disguise. Mrs. Charity Givens,
now, she's no more truly charitable than I am! She's shrewd and stingy,
her lavish gifts to the poor are merely made for the sake of the praise
and eulogy heaped upon her by her admiring friends. Manley Knight,
renowed for his bravery in the war, is an arrant coward. His soul is
a thing of whining terror, his heroism but a mask. Oh, I know--I read
these people truly, when they sit to me--off guard and unconsciously
betraying themselves.
“Mrs. Holm Boddy! Pah! She's far from domestic! She yearns for the halls
of dazzling light, for gayety and even debauchery. Her devotion to home
and children is the blackest of lies! And Iva Payne! She's no invalid!
It's a pose to seem interesting and delicately fragile. You should see
her stuff when no one's looking!
“Judge Drinkwater is a secret drunkard. Lotta Munn is a pauper--an
adventuress, pretending to wealth she doesn't possess. Herman True and
his wife! Zounds, if you could hear those two quarrel! Yet they pose as
lovers yet, and folks fall for it!”
“May Young?” Warble asked, breathlessly.
“An old maid. Well preserved, but no chicken. And Daisy Snow!
Angel-faced débutante! Huh, she knows more than her mother ever dreamed
of! You should see her in my studio, at her sittings! Cocktails,
cigarettes, snatches of wild cabaret songs and dances--oh, Daisy Snow is
a caution!”
“The Leathershams?”
“He's a profiteer--she--well, she was a cook--”
“Marigold! No!”
“Marigold, yes! You are a little numskull, you know. You can't see
through these people's masks.”
“Can I reform them?”
“No, Baby Doll, you can't do that. They're dyed in the wool
hypocrites--joined to their idols--let 'em alone. And as to that husband
of yours--”
“Stop! Stop! I can't stand any more! Pleathe go--pleathe--”
* * * * *
“What're you going to do about that Tertium Quid you've annexed?” Aunt
Dressie inquired, casually.
“I don't know,” Warble uncertained. “He has wonderful ambitions and
aspirations. He wants to be a ragpicker--a real one.”
“Ambitions are queer things,” Aunt Dressie thoughtfuled. “Now, you
mightn't think it, but I want to be a steeple climber.”
“You take Porgie off my hands, and he'll help you--”
“Oh, no, child, every lassie has her laddie--and you saw him first.”
* * * * *
Warble sighed. Thus was she always thrown at Porgie's head.
Fate, like a sluicing torrent carried her ever on. Beware, beware, the
rapids are below you!
Thus Conscience, Prudence, Wisdom, Policy, Safety First--all the deadly
virtues called her.
Did she heed?
As the sea's self should heed a pebble-cast.
* * * * *
On a June evening, when Petticoat was called to Iva Payne's, Porgie
came.
Bowed in by a thin red line of footmen, he found Warble in the
moon-parlor. She wore a picture frock of _point d'esprit_ and tiny pink
rosebuds, and little pink socks and sandals.
“Come out on the Carp Pond,” he muttered, picking her up and stuffing
her in his pocket. “Nobody will see us.”
He seated her in the stern of a shallop and took the golden oars. Three
of his long sweeping strokes took them a mile up stream and they drifted
back. Porgie talked steadily and uninterruptedly. He told her in detail
of his ragpicking plans and how perfectly she would fit in.
“Think of it!” he boomed. “No fetters of fashion, no gyves of
convention. Free--free as air--free verse, free love, free lunch--ah,
goroo--goroo!”
“Goroo--” agreed Warble, “sweet--sweet--”
“Sweet yourself!” roared Porgie, and grabbed her all up in his
gorilla-like arms just as a ringing, musical, “Ship ahoy!” sounded on
their ears.
“Hello there, Warbie!”
She knew then it was Petticoat.
“Having a walk?” he inquired, casually.
“Yop,” she casualed back.
He pulled his skiff up alongside, threw Porgie into the deep pool and
snatched Warble in beside himself.
“Time to go home,” he said, cheerfully. “Good night, Sproggins.”
He took her into the house through the conservatory, paused to pluck and
twine a wreath of tiny pink rosebuds for her, adjusted it on her rather
touseled curls, and took her out to the Moorish Courtyard.
“Now, Warb, what about the baboon?”
“I want to go ragpick with him and be pag-rickers together. Can I?
Pleathe--”
“Nixy. Now, you hark at me. I'm the real thing--a good old
Cotton-Petticoat--birth, breeding and boodle. Your Porgie person has
none of these--”
“But he loves me!” Warble wailed.
“Yes, 'cause he can't get you. Go along with him, and then see where
you'll be! No, my Soufflée, you hear me! Can the Porgie and stick to
your own Big Bill--your own legit.”
“But you don't love me--”
“Oh, I do--in my quaint married-man fashion. And--ahem--I hate to
mention it--but--”
“I know--and I _am_ banting--and exercising, and rolling downstairs and
all that.”
“Well, we're married, and divorces are not the novelty they once
were--so let's stay put.”
“Kiss me, then--”
He brushed a butterfly kiss across her left eyebrow, and together they
strolled back into the house, and as he went up to bed, Warble went down
to the pantry to see about something.